Rwandan mayors to face trial in France over 1994 genocide

Two former Rwandan mayors go on trial in France Tuesday facing charges of crimes against humanity and genocide over the 1994 massacres in the central African country.

As the second trial in Paris by a special court created to go after suspected Rwandan killers who fled to France, it is expected to lay bare the strained relations between the two countries. Two decades on, Rwanda accuses France of complicity in the genocide — in which at least 800,000 people died in an 100-day slaughter — because of its unwavering support for the Hutu nationalist government at the time.

on the 20th anniversary of the mass killings two years ago, Rwanda’s minority Tutsi president, Paul Kagame, openly accused French soldiers of not only complicity in the genocide but of actually taking part in it. Read more